When we let the writers here at Sweetwater take a preview look at the page last Friday, it was amazing to hear all the different opinions and preferences that were exclaimed.

"Man, that ____ mic sounds amazing on Nick!"
"How about that ____ mic? I can't believe it's only $179!"
"Did you have a different favorite on the male versus the female voice? I thought ___ sounded great on him but ___ was the best on her."

It's exciting to give people the opportunity to hear mics they've never heard before. Even for me, there were over half of these mics that I was unfamiliar with. I found a few that definitely interested me.

The other caveat is that 3 seconds of listening to a mic through youtube is hardly a way to know what the mic can do. At best its a cursory view and at worst useless.

That's why we made the original 24/96K files available at the click of a button. The vocal recordings that are downloadable are close to a minute in length (instead of 10 seconds) and will offer more insight and drastically greater detail when comparing the sound of these mics.

It's funny. Just for the hell of it, I flipped through a bunch of them just using my macbook speakers. Most of them sounded somewhat similar, but for some reason the chandler mic sounded a lot bigger and better than everything else. Don't crucify me, I'm fully aware it's not how you should do it.... I listened through on Adam's and Barefoot's as well. Just an interesting observation!

Goes to show that any mic can work great in the right hands and right context!

I'm surprised no dynamic mics were used in the shootout? Re-20 vs SM7b anybody?

I didn't like the Soundelux u195 as much as I thought I might. I couldn't find a reliable context for this mic before this shootout and it's one I've been eyeballing. Thank you Sweetwater, although it might have not been in your favor.

I'm surprised no dynamic mics were used in the shootout? Re-20 vs SM7b anybody?

We decided early on to limit the mic selection to just side-address LDCs. That was done to keep the number of mics to a manageable number. Even limiting it to only side-address LDCs, the original list we considered was over 100 mics.

I can split my opinion on three categories: unusable, usable, great. Unusable means that I wouldn't use this microphone on this vocalist, not that is unusable in different scenario, but it would just make me work too much to get what I would like to hear. Usable means that I would use it in the mix and be perfectly happy with the results. Great means that I would just have to work less to get it where it's finished. I just listened to the male voice. I'm sure that the result's between usable and great would be mixed if that would be blind test (price tag also forces more radical opinion), but I'm pretty sure "unusable" would stay more or less the same.

I didn't like the Soundelux u195 as much as I thought I might. I couldn't find a reliable context for this mic before this shootout and it's one I've been eyeballing. Thank you Sweetwater, although it might have not been in your favor.

I hope that maybe you found one of the other 49 that you might like. ;-)

For the female voice I liked the Bock 251 best. I think I liked the Tele 47 best for the male voice, but I need to listen some more.

I was completely sold on the Bock for the female voice when I heard it in the mix. Classy sounding - present and insistent without any harshness, and sits in the mix perfectly, imo. Other mics struggled to some degree with either harshness/stridentness or getting lost in the mix (or both)

I think I'm having more trouble with the male vocal because if I were recording that phrase, I think I would first reach for a good dynamic. I do know the Bock 251 is not my favorite for the male vocal - the highs are too much

I downloaded the high-res files then compress and eq the hell out of them, that's when you will hear more expensive mic separating them self from the cheap ones IMHO, and I mean the differences isn't subtle. Redd was my favorite,

I'm either too busy or lazy to do it myself, can't decide which, but someone should download all the files, scramble up the order, name them each for a US State, and repost. Then we'll see. Canola oil is far more popular than rapeseed oil, and I imagine the Chandler Redd would outsell the same exact thing but named New Jersey.

I'm either too busy or lazy to do it myself, can't decide which, but someone should download all the files, scramble up the order, name them each for a US State, and repost. Then we'll see. Canola oil is far more popular than rapeseed oil, and I imagine the Chandler Redd would outsell the same exact thing but named New Jersey.

I agree, a scrambled bunch would be fun, just to let your ears pick out perhaps the three best sounding mic's as you hear them, then find out which they were out of this broad field.

I keep listening and I keep coming back to the Bock 251.

I really wanted to love the Redd mic, it's certainly interesting but the highs sound too far back for me.

The Chandler Redd Mic that everybody is raving about is too scooped for me on both vocals, but like how smooth and rich it is. I'll check out how it sounds with EQ next. I would like to here it on drums and acoustic guitar too. Still much prefer the Tele 251E which has the right amount of upper mid cut and definition, and is my favorite. (Luckily I own 2 of them ). The Tele U47 is great as a warmer smoother alternative on both male and female. Also like both Manley mics, Soundeluxe 195, and the Mojave 301 is quite nice for a cheaper mic, as are the Rode NTK and Audio Technica 4050.

I listened to all of the mics with the female vocalist. Before I listened I figured out the music track was synced so I decided to listen to all the mics with the accompanying track. (I downloaded the 96/24 tracks and listened in my studio).

Like a few have stated, I think all could be made to make a good-sounding recording. I think what set the more expensive mics (not all) apart was the "body" of the sound. Getting a foot or so away from a mic can certainly reduce bottom end. I'd have to go back and identify them but there were a few that had that nice character. I paid attention to the mics I owned and compared them to THOSE mics and was happy to hear there aren't any differences that maybe some eq couldn't bring closer. I'll try the eq challenge later and see if I can get one of my mics close to the top dollar ones.

I guess the real challenge would be if someone could identify a mic just by hearing it and not seeing the label.

Anyway, I applaud Lynn Fuston and Sweetwater for the great work putting this together. It's valuable.

I'd like to of heard the male demo's done with a vocalist with a really big powerful harmonically complex voice, in my experience it really sorts the expensive LCD's from the cheap ones, because the cheap LCD's on the whole can't resolve the output in a musically pleasing way.

Very happy to see the AT5040 included as there is very little media currently available featuring the 5040 and I've been curious about this mic for quite a while. I'm surprised more people aren't raving about it...the AT5040 is my pick for best on the female voc. Stellar clarity and detail despite having a nice, rounded-off feel.

And it's hard to believe the Behringer C-1 came across as nice as it does. Definitely not among the best sounding, but maybe on par with the C214...
I'm also surprised to see the WA-87 getting so much love on these threads...doesn't sound too great to me.

I listened to all the mics blindly phrase by phrase with the male vocalist and picked my favorite mics for each phrase. I took the mic names off in my mixer and switched up the order of the tracks every time. I was curious if there would be a common denominator. I ended up picking different mics every time so there was never a clear winner. However, something I was surprised about was not once did I pick a Neumann mic. The other surprise was that I picked the AT4040 as one of my top choices a few times which is one of the cheapest mics in the list. So I may have to pick that one up. It had a high-mid bump that none of the other mics had which was kind of cool when the singer was singing the gentler phrases.